Determining the location of IT assets such as printers can be difficult. There are several applications where location information is useful, but it is not easily determinable.
One approach to determining the location of an asset includes manual configuration. For example, for every device, IT personal enters a location description such as “Building 4U, Post F45.” However, this type of nomenclature is not standard and hence, not machine readable and cannot be used for automatic discovery. Humans have to read and interpret which devices are co-located, based on the name. This solution has limited accuracy and for a large number of devices, can be very labor intensive to maintain an accurate list.
An improved location awareness technique would be beneficial to managing devices.